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Enhanced Services Forecasting Overview

Enhanced Services Forecasting offers an efficient way of calculating services forecasts:

We include resource requests from backlog calculations in the forecast calculations, providing a more complete picture of anticipated revenue.
You can forecast unscheduled backlog and opportunities on a curve, which allows you to refine your forecast calculations by dividing the anticipated revenue over a period of time. For more information, see About Forecast Curves.
You can run forecast calculations as and when you need them, or schedule a job to run the calculations at regular intervals. For more information, see Running Forecast Calculations.
The Services Revenue Forecast page enables you to view the values generated by a forecast calculation all in one place. You can drill down and view RPG values for subregions and sublevels and also view the forecast values calculated for opportunities. You can expand projects and view a breakdown by forecast factor of the total value for each forecast category on that project. For more information, see Viewing a Services Revenue Forecast.
You can override values displayed on the Services Revenue Forecast page. Icons enable you to see at a glance when an override is present, and whether the adjusted value is higher, lower, or the same as the original value. Hovering over an adjusted value or a summary roll-up displays a tooltip that shows details of overrides. For more information, see Overriding Services Revenue Forecast Values.

Objects Used in Forecasting

Custom Objects

The following custom objects are available in PSA to support calculated forecast generation without the need for manual data entry:

Object	Description	Related Information
Forecast Calculation	Stores the parameters used to run a forecast calculation against a region, practice, or group.	Forecast Calculation Fields
Forecast Calculation Log	Stores details of any errors that occurred when a forecast calculation was run.	Forecast Calculation Log Fields
Forecast Curve	Contains one or more forecast curve details to measure varying anticipated revenue over a defined sequence of time (such as a quarter).	Forecast Curve Fields
Forecast Curve Detail	Represents a single sequence of time used within a forecast curve, and includes the percentage of the total forecast amount of revenue anticipated within that time period.	Forecast Curve Detail Fields
Forecast Detail	Stores the forecast records created for a project or opportunity.	Forecast Detail Fields
Forecast Detail Category	Stores the weighted category totals for the related project or opportunity.	Forecast Detail Category Fields
Forecast Override	Stores information on an override applied to a forecast summary category or forecast detail category.	Forecast Override Fields
Forecast Run Info	For internal use only. Used to input the information for the forecast calculation run.	Forecast Run Info Fields
Forecast Setup	Stores the details required to configure and run a forecast calculation.	Forecast Setup Fields
Forecast Setup Category	Stores the parameters used for a forecast calculation by the forecast categories (for example, Best Case or Expected). There must be at least one forecast category with multipliers assigned for a forecast calculation to run successfully.	Forecast Setup Category Fields
Forecast Summary	Stores the forecast records created for a region, practice, or group.	Forecast Summary Fields
Forecast Summary Category	Stores the weighted category totals for the related region, practice, or group.	Forecast Summary Category Fields

Additional Objects

To use Enhanced Services Forecasting, you also need access to the following objects, which are used in the Forecasting process:

Assignment
Budget
Expense
Group and Group Actuals (only required for running a forecast from a Group)
Hours to Days Rule
Milestone
Miscellaneous Adjustment
Opportunity
Practice and Practice Actuals (only required for running a forecast from a Practice)
Project and Project Actuals
Region and Regional Actuals (only required for running a forecast from a Region)
Resource Request
Schedule
Time Period

Forecast Factors

Forecasts can be based on multiple factors:

Actuals (Billings, Expenses)
Scheduled Backlog (Assignments, Resource Requests, Milestones)
Unscheduled Backlog (Budget minus Actuals minus Backlog)
Opportunities (within Regions, Practices and Groups that do not have an associated Project)

Enhanced Services Forecasting gives you the flexibility to choose which factors you want to include: when configuring your forecast setup, you can enter "0.00" as the weighting for forecast factors you want to omit.

Staff with appropriate permissions can use different sets of weightings for the different forecast categories available, which are Best Case, Expected and Worst Case.

Note:

Forecast factors are displayed on the Services Revenue Forecast page for forecast calculations run after the Spring 2019 release.

Example of Weightings on a Forecast Calculation

This table provides an example of how weightings are applied to the different forecast factors within a forecast category to provide different forecast values for a given project and time period. For more information on using weightings on forecast calculations, see Configuring Forecast Calculations.

Project A Q3 Forecast
Forecast Factor	$ Amount	Forecast Categories
Forecast Factor	$ Amount	Best Case	Expected	Worst Case
Actuals	$5,000	1.00	1.00	1.00
Expenses	$200	1.00	1.00	1.00
Scheduled Assignments	$5,000	1.25	1.00	0.50
Held Resource Requests	$1,000	1.00	1.00	0.50
Unheld Resource Requests	$2,000	1.00	1.00	0.00
Scheduled Milestones	$10,000	1.00	1.00	0.50
Unscheduled Backlog	$12,000	1.25	1.00	0.00
Opportunities	$5,000	1.00	0.80	0.50
TOTAL FORECAST	$40,200	$44,450	$39,200	$15,700

Formulae Used to Calculate Forecast Factors

The tables below describe how we arrive at the opportunity and unscheduled backlog values used in forecast calculations.

For more information on the formulae used in forecast calculations, see How Forecast Calculations Work.

Calculating Opportunity Values
Order	Data	Multiplied By	Result
1	Value of the opportunity. For more information, see Opportunities in "How Forecast Calculations Work".	Value of the Percent Burndown field on the Forecast Curve Detail record.	The adjusted burndown.
2	The adjusted burndown.	Value of the Probability (%) field on the opportunity record.	The probability and adjusted burndown.
3	The probability and adjusted burndown.	Weightings defined in the appropriate Opportunity Category multipliers on the Forecast Setup page. For more information, see Forecast Setup Fields.	The opportunity forecast.

Calculating Unscheduled Backlog Values
Order	Data	Multiplied By	Result
1	Unscheduled Backlog (Budget minus Actuals minus Backlog).	Value of the Percent Burndown field on the Forecast Curve Detail record.	The adjusted burndown.
2	The adjusted burndown.	Weightings defined in the appropriate Project Category multipliers on the Forecast Setup page. For more information, see Forecast Setup Fields.	The calculated unscheduled backlog on a project.

Enhanced Services Forecasting Permission Sets

This table identifies permission sets that you may need to assign to users for access to Enhanced Services Forecasting.

Permission Set Name	Level	Description
PSA - Services Forecasting	2	Assign to users who need full access to Enhanced Services Forecasting.
PSA - Services Forecasting - Commit	3	Assign to users who need to commit forecasts.
PSA - Services Forecasting - Overrides	3	Assign to users who need to perform overrides.
PSA - Services Forecasting - Project Manager	3	Assign to users with a Project Manager role, who need to view forecast calculations for their projects and opportunities. If a project manager needs to use the Services Revenue Forecast page, you must also assign them the Regional Manager permission set.
PSA - Services Forecasting - Regional Manager	3	Assign to users with a Regional Manager role, who need to view forecast calculations for the regions, practices and groups they cover, and for relevant projects and opportunities. Users who need to use the Services Revenue Forecast page must be assigned this permission set.
PSA - Services Forecasting - Run	3	Assign to users who need to run forecast calculations.
PSA - Services Forecasting - Setup	3	Assign to users who need to configure the setup for forecast calculations.